question for those of you who buy from yahoo japan auctions......

I have never tried buying from yahoo japan auctions and was wondering how difficult it was...also how much would a 3rd party cost to buy sometying like this? What would a normal final cost for everything be?

I see an option to buy this as an overseas customer through something called "Buyee"...would this be considered the 3rd party buyer that you are refering to, or do you guys have contacts in Japan that act as your 3rd party proxy? I'm assuming this Buyee service is probably expensive, otherwise why would it exist, but it seems like an easier option to use for shopping here.

I have used tenso in the past and they have been relatively cheap. I think I paid the cost of the item, shipping to tenso, a usage fee based on weight (which was cheap), and the international shipping. You may want to check them out or at least compare the prices. It was the cheapest that I have been able to find... but Eric is right, most will hit you with a service fee, a percentage of the cost of the item, and both shipping costs. At least with tenso I got around 1 of the fees.

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Posted 14 May 2015 - 09:39 AM

Every service has different fees. But on average is around a 30% on the winning bid, plus a bank fee, then shipping to the bidder, then shipping to you. Some sites have a shipping fee too.
So 400 (winning bid) + 120 (30%) + 300 (bank fee) + 500 (shipping to bidder) + 1300 (Shipping to you) = 2620
This is a generic layout, it could be more, but probably not any less.

Holy moley!

I just fly to Japan and have the auctions shipped to my hotel room then fly back.

Still cheaper than the way above haha...

Damn i thought you guys bought Yahoo stuff just like on Feebay. That seems like a shitload of trouble, im having hard time enough trying to deal with other Finns and their city slang... lol

Buyee is one of the more expensive ones. I wouldn't use them....They all have their own fee system.

I've actually avoided bidding using Rinkya for the same reason as their commission tables are higher and they have a flat base fee as well. The thing that sucks about Buyee is the consolidation fee they charge if you want to ship more than one auction item together. Otherwise I haven't found that they are any more expensive than the others, and they're very reliable and straightforward. For the record, these are the guys who refunded a $1.5k purchase at their expense because Japan Post was taking months to send me a refund for a lost package.

What I have found is that some services end up being cheaper for auctions below a certain price threshold, and as mentioned it matters how many auctions you're after at a time. I agree that they're all legitimate though, so the best bet is just to go look at the fee tables and determine which is best for the particular auction you're looking at

I recently used the Japonica Market service and the commission was lower than Buyee (who I generally use), but they required a deposit beforehand for the bid and did everything through email so the turn-around was slower than the other sites. They would also only ship EMS and wouldn't do SAL. Win some, lose some.

The main take-away from this though should be that using these services is not difficult or complicated. They're intentionally user friendly and internationalized web services.If someone tries telling you otherwise they're lying to you and probably have ulterior motives.

Always ship EMS, SAL is unreliable and takes very long. EMS is trackable and takes only 4-6 days to get to you.

It's more expensive for sure, but always worth it. I've never lost or had problems with EMS. I've lost 2 packages shipped SAL, and received 1 package I can only assume was stepped on.

Because of the big footprint on the box lol...??

; )

PF

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I acutely used Yahoo auction proxy service, because there is language problem in Yahoo Auction, so it's better to use japan yahoo auction proxy service, they helped me to buy a product directly from Japan.